The children will be exposed to a comprehensive phonics instruction program that is effective for the students and just plain fun!! The publishers at Hampton-Brown have developed wonderful instructional materials for the early childhood classroom. The program entitled Phonics and Friends, easily transitions students from phonics to literacy.

The program builds phonemic awareness, introduces sound-letter association, models decoding strategies and helps build emergent reading skills. The program also provides a wide range of strategies for meeting individual needs as well as user- friendly assessment tools for the teacher. To build phonemic awareness the program includes sing along songs, Big Books and CD's. To introduce sound-letter association, 26 letter Rhyme Cards are provided. The front side of the card is a memorable rhyme and the backside demonstrates letter formation. To model decoding strategies, 26 Big Phonics Storybooks are provided. The Storybooks include predictable, patterned text with many words representing the target sound and letter with fun characters in a delightful story. To build emergent reading skills the program has 26 Sound and Letter Packs, each pack containing six copies of the Phonics Storybook in small format. The children try out newly acquired phonics skills in these leveled pattern books. The stories promote instant recognition of high-frequency words. A Sing-Along Song and Story Tape with Picture Word Cards are also included.

St. Stephen's Armenian Elementary School has always maintained high academic standards for their curriculum and provides the best quality instructional materials to meet these standards. Reviews are conducted regularly of the school's instructional materials in all subject areas. It gives us great pride to strive to provide the most innovative and challenging programs available.